Villagers 07-12-06
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Automated anguish
Computer says no to booking
I have discovered the true reason for our increased stress levels: the automated phone menu. The other day I attempted to book a couple of cinema tickets using a phone-booking system. It was one of the longest and most painful discussions that I have ever had with a machine.
After yes-ing and no-ing, and up-ing and down-ing, I finally reached the option to enter my credit card number. I punched in my number. The machine, however, was in a terrible mood.
It was like a “computer says no” moment from the comedy Little Britain. Due to a technical fault – or bad humour – the machine couldn't book my ticket. Instead it placed me in the queue for a human operator. My trouble was only starting.
“You are number four in the queue,” the machine said, in a tone that made it clear I wasn't going anywhere. And I waited and waited and waited.
Just before I hung up, a ray of light: “You are number three.” I dug deep into my vast reserves of patience and held on in hope.
Still number three. Minutes pass away. Then two. More waiting and finally, one. I'm next.
Then shock horror: “Thank you for holding, you are number three in the queue”. THREE? Evidently the machine was in foul spirits. It is probably on the minimum wage or has had its pension changed.
Nonetheless, even machines deserve a second chance, so I persevered, chanting Hindu mantras to keep my soul from imploding. Finally, an operator, a human being, and I began my booking. But just as I gave my credit card details, the call was cut off (I suspect the machine). My wife heard me screaming, and I just held back from thrashing the furniture. Oh the pain, oh the anguish, and still no film.
Ciarán Mac Aonghusa
Churchtown, Dublin 14
Opening up Croker
Ever higher ticket prices, but for what?
I am amazed at the increase by over 32 per cent in the cheapest tickets to see the soccer matches which will be played at Croke Park – they are now €50. The GAA is a very wealthy organisation and yet in our local area children as young as eight are doing sponsorship walks to raise funds for tracksuits, etc. Where is all this money going?
Paul Doran
Clondalkin, Dublin 22
Children's hospital
HSE inability to plan is shocking
If you have led a sheltered life, you may not be familiar with the low-life critical assessment: “They couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery.” However, you would make the logical assumption that nobody would try to plan the construction of a multi-million euro brewery without having a brewing engineer on the planning team. They would at least let a brewer look at their final plans.
You will, therefore, greet with utter incredulity the assertion that the closed-doors ‘task force' which the HSE and Department of Health (and Children!) set up to plan the construction of a €500-700m children's hospital does not have even one clinical paediatrician on it. Nor any representatives of the three existing children's hospitals – the people who actually run children's hospitals. They are now looking – urgently – for tenders and will award a contract, preferably before the election, without consulting the people who will actually have to work in the facility and care for the health and lives of our children and grandchildren.
Maurice O'Connell
Tralee, Co Kerry
New Ikea store
Thanks a billion: Ikea to benefit from NRA cash
Why is our national roads authority spending €1bn on the M50 so that a foreign ‘flat pack' oversized furniture superstore can have a free driveway to its entrance and cause severe congestion to other road users who have no interest in the self-assembly of magazine racks or designer decking?
Keith Nolan
Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim
Eanna Ní Lamhna
‘Snap' not so satisfying for poor mouse
How surprising and disappointing to see éanna Ní Lamhna encouraging readers of her nature column (Village, 30 November, below) to bait a trap and wait for the “satisfying snap” as a mouse's neck or back is broken.
Those seeking to evict unwanted mice might instead consider a compassionate approach – a regularly checked catch-and-release trap, for example. Widely available in hardware stores across the country, these devices make it unnecessary to kill what Mooney Goes Wild hails as one of Ireland's most successful mammals. Once caught, the rodent can be relocated outside (into a wooded area or meadow ideally) and allowed to continue living in nature.
Experts would agree that the most effective way to keep mice at bay is not to continually kill them, but to mouse-proof your house. This involves filling in any exterior access points in walls or around pipes (even small, pencil-sized holes), storing pet-food supplies and garden seeds in sealed metal or glass containers and ensuring that bins are securely covered.
Philip Kiernan
Mullingar, Co Westmeath
Anti social behaviour
Fine Gael out of touch with boot camps
Fine Gael's proposed boot-camp strategy sets the tone of things to come. Fine Gael's defence spokesman Billy Timmins (pictured above) has laid down a marker with the election looming. But is this a quest for attention or a serious consideration from the main opposition? Or is it a knee-jerk reaction to the current government's ASBO proposals?
A scenario whereby the defence forces will be part of the reform system in Ireland is one of the most striking aspects of this boot camp proposal. Timmins confirmed on Monday his plans and advised that the defence forces “could be an alternative for young juveniles who would otherwise be committed to prison for anti-social behaviour or other minor criminal behaviour”.
If, as Timmins advised, an army-run disciplinary routine was chosen as an alternative to prison, then the values of rehabilitation and reconditioning would need to be carried out in the same way. But how could this be done under a regime of oppressed physical and mental duress?
The aggression associated with boot camps, and inevitably implemented by them, would surely manifest in increased levels of criminality. If a breeding ground for aggressive young adults is the aim, then this is well-considered social policy planning. It is likely the aggressive activities of a boot camp scenario would be tempered by education and psychological and emotional counselling, but for what reason would you need the former when a focus on the latter could be far more resultant?
Boot camps were banned in Florida in June of this year by conservative governor Jeb Bush after the death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson at the hands of drill instructors. This is only one example and there is surely arguments for boot camps that are convincing, but if a conservative-run state in the US has outlawed boot camps, can Fine Gael not see the backward step they are proposing? It must be conceivable that Enda Kenny and Billy Timmins could liase with their policy-makers and come up with something far more sensible and humane.
Brian Strahan
Rush, Co Dublin
St Andrew's Agreement
Time for unionists to share blame
Is Ian Paisley's “abhorrence of cohabitation with murderers of one's relatives and neighbours” reasonable, when forces Paisley supported did the same to Gerry Adams' relatives and neighbours?
In the article, ‘Crossing the Rubicon' by Alan Murray, Village, 30 November, the IRA is described as “engaged in [a] campaign of murder and atrocity”. In ‘I'm lucky to be above the ground', Village, 23 November, RUC constable John Weir describes how he did the same. He told his superiors, who ignored him because they were involved.
Johnston Brown's RUC memoir Into the Dark opens with his savage beating from colleagues for arresting UVF members. RUC colleagues nobbled raids on UVF arms dumps. Loyalist ‘informants' operated freely as assassins. Brown's recording of Ken Barrett confessing to shooting solicitor Pat Finucane was sabotaged. Years later, Brown, whose colleagues nicknamed him a “proddy basher”, told the Stevens Enquiry. After Barrett's second confession to BBC reporter John Ware was broadcast, he was convicted.
Since one in five were paid informants, it is reasonable to assume that the RUC was an officer-class and intelligence division for paramilitaries devoid of direction toward any goal other than the nearest hated ‘taig'. British involvement has yet to be admitted.
Ian Paisley habitually named individuals as republican “murderers” in Westminster. In 1999, SDLP leader Seamus Mallon accused him of acting with “the grossest irresponsibility”, of putting the individuals' “lives, and the lives of their families, at risk”.
Paisley accused Eugene Reavey of setting up the 1975 Kingsmill massacre, when 10 Protestant civilians were shot dead. In fact, Reavey was the brother of two of five nationalists shot the night before by UVF-UDR assassins. Paisley did not refer to this, or to systematic and murderous terror unleashed on nationalists over a long period. He never apologised for slandering Reavey, whose Roman Catholic brother died in hospital beside a Protestant survivor Alan Black, with who Reavey then became friendly with.
The just-published Oireachtas report noted “The [British] secretary of state [thought it] unfortunate that certain elements in the police were very close to the Ulster Volunteer Force and prepared to hand information to... Mr Paisley... the army's judgment was that the UDR was heavily infiltrated by extremist Protestants.”
‘Legitimate' forces were partly responsible for the 1974 Dublin Monaghan bombings. Then British ambassador, Arthur Galsworthy noted, “The predictable attempt by the IRA... blame the British... has made no headway”. Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave blamed “everybody who has practised or preached violence”. The ambassador wrote: “It is only now that the South has experienced violence that they are reacting in the way that the North has sought for so long.” He told the Northern Ireland Office, “It would be... a psychological mistake for us to rub this point in... I think the Irish have taken the point.”
The Dail now appears to accept that the bombings were part of a campaign by Crown Force. Perhaps history might have been different had the government accepted it then.
It may take longer for the British to accept responsibility. In 1972, 14 unarmed nationalists were shot dead by paratroopers in Derry. The event was subject to two sworn judicial enquiries. The findings of the first were as significant an impetus to IRA recruitment as the shootings. The latest inquiry began in April 1998 and is expected to report in 2008. A long time and a lot of money, £270m, to hear what should be a statement of the obvious.
“It would help greatly if the DUP entered into direct talks now with Sinn Féin.” It would help if they were not given spurious excuses for failing to do so.
Niall Meehan
Dublin 8
US use of Shannon
Sycophantic relationship with the US
The sycophantic and craven relationship that the Irish government has with the discredited current regime in the White House was brought sharply into focus with the reactions in the Dáil to the EU report on ‘extraordinary rendition' flights. Michael McDowell seems to consider it a step too far to question the verbal assurances on rendition from an administration which has recently approved the use of coerced information in the prosecution of alleged terrorist charges. This same administration which started a devastating war in Iraq based on false intelligence has since consistently undermined the Geneva convention in its prosecution of this war.
McDowell obviously considers a bowl of shamrock a far more worthy cause than that of international law and respect for human rights.
Barry Walsh
Blackrock, Cork